Tower Defense the History of a Sub-Genre

Tower defense is a subgenre of real-time strategy video games. The main objective is to kill all enemies before they reach a point on the map by building a wide array of defenses. These defenses can be upgraded with materials such as money or resources throughout the game. Money or resources are normally collected through various ways in different games within the subgenre most common is by defeating the enemy or by completing a wave. A “wave” is the term given to the number of units spawned at one time that will progress through the map. The player has the choice of where they place the towers within the grid as long as the path of the enemy is never fully blocked. Other tower defense games will have a set path and give the player the option of where to position defenses around the set path.

The 1^st tower defense game was developed by Atari Games called Rampart in 1990. Early 2000’s sparked a new interest in the genre with map mods for StarCraft, Age of Empires II, and Warcraft III. Even the popular PlayStation title Final Fantasy VII had a mini-game called “The Fort Condor”. Indie developers started to use Adobe Flash to make tower defense browser games in 2007. Desktop tower defense games didn’t start till mid 2007 as well. Now we see tower defense games on the Mobile platform with popular titles such as GemCraft and Plants vs. Zombies. In 2008 the sub-genre continued to grow leading to game consoles such as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Handhelds were not left out either at the time tower defense games appeared on the Nintendo DS with titles such as Lock’s Quest and Ninjatown.

USPTO trademarked “Tower Defense” on June 3, 2008 but never really enforced the trademark till 2010. Developers and Publishers are able to use “tower defense” but can’t capitalize the sub-genre.

Why do I play Tower Defense games well the answer to that is simple, I find them fun! From when I played StarCraft as a young child my main goal was never to wipe out my enemy but instead build a defense so powerful that the computer could not wipe me out. Once I discovered this genre later on in life on the Xbox 360 while playing Crystal Defenders publish by Square-Enix I was hooked. Since then I have played titles such as Dungeon Defenders, Defense Grid 2, and Sanctum 2. I hope this sub-genre stays around for a while and I look forward to seeing what developers can do to push the boundaries of the sub-genre.